Alone with the Dead

by Robert J. Randisi

  In recent years, however, Erasmus had gone the way of this particular section of Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn. No longer was it considered one of the finer high schools in Brooklyn, as it had one of the higher crime rates of all the Brooklyn high schools. Keough had often thought, during his short tenure at the Six-Seven Precinct, that it might be a good idea, once school was in session, to bar the doors and windows and keep all of the students inside. He thought that would cause an immediate drop in the neighborhood crime rate. Some people who lived in the area-and a lot of cops-called it "Ignoramus High School."

  His car had been parked in the precinct parking lot. He'd pulled out onto Snyder Avenue, turned right, and driven down the one-way street until he reached Flatbush Avenue. His partners had gone to find their meal in their unit, so he had to take his own car to the scene. There he turned right and drove to Erasmus High School, which was only a block away, on the corner of Flatbush and Church avenues. There was a blue-and-white RMP-Radio Motor Patrol-parked in front, and one officer was leaning against the car, waiting.

  Keough parked behind the RMP and got out. It was a warm night, and he could feel the perspiration starting in his armpits. He approached the officer and recognized him as Neil Bullion, a barrel-chested ex-Transit Police officer who was having some trouble making the transition. For one thing, he still wore three guns-service revolver, off-duty in a belt holster, and another in an ankle holster-a holdover from his Transit days, when he was working the subway stations and tunnels without a partner to back him up.

  "Anyone else here yet?" he asked.

  "No," Bullion said, "just the squad!" He pronounced it squahhhd, drawing the word out, meaning that Keough himself had arrived.

  There was no love lost between uniformed patrol and the detective squad. Patrol usually felt that the "Squahhhd" was of the opinion that their shit didn't stink. Of course, a uniformed officer who made detective and transferred to the squad often changed his opinions accordingly.

  "Where's the girl?"

  "In the schoolyard, by the side door. My partner's with her."

  "Thanks."

  "Use your flashlight," Bullion said, "or you'll break your fuckin' neck."

  "I didn't bring one. Can I borrow yours?"

  Bullion stared at Keough for a few minutes, then sighed and removed his metal-cased oversized flashlight from his belt.

  "Make sure I get it back, all right?"

  "Sure," Keough said, hefting the thing. "What would I keep it for, a baseball bat?"

  "Believe me," Bullion said, "I've used it as one a time or two."

  Keough was sure that Bullion and his flashlight had cracked quite a few heads in their time.

  He walked around to the schoolyard and switched on the light. He noticed that there was no lock on the schoolyard gate, so the gate had not been forced. Somebody in the school would catch hell for that.

  He found the side door, which was at the bottom of a set of steep steps. Bullion's partner, Frank Cuccio, was waiting at the top of the steps, smoking a cigarette. Keough saw the tip glow brightly for a moment before it was ground out beneath the man's foot.

  "The 'Keyhole' man," Cuccio said, using a nickname Keough had been hearing most of his life. "About fuckin' time you got here." There was no rancor in Cuccio's tone.

  "Hey," Keough said, giving it back, "I'm first, ain't I? Where is she?"

  "Down there. Watch your step."

  Cuccio switched on his flashlight and they used both lights to make it to the bottom of the steps without killing themselves.

  The area at the bottom was approximately five feet wide by nine feet long. The girl was lying atop the storm drain. There was still some dampness on the ground, even though it had not rained for three days. The sharp odor that tickled Keough's nose told him that all of the dampness was not plain water.

  Keough leaned over the girl and shone his light in her face.

  "Fuckin' shame, huh?" Cuccio said.

  Keough nodded.

  "How come you're alone?" the other man asked.

  "My partners are out getting something to eat."

  "Sounds good," Cuccio said. "My partner and I were on our way to a meal when we got the call on this."

  "Who called it in?"

  "Don't know."

  The light made her face seem even paler than it was. She looked young, sixteen, or seventeen, probably a student, possibly a student here at this school. Her face was serene and appeared unmarked, but the garish light of the flashlight in the dark area could have been washing out any bruises she might have had. The medical examiner would have to determine whether she was bruised or not. From the position of the body, however, it was clear enough that she hadn't simply been dumped down the steps. She had either been killed there or been carried and placed there after she was dead.

  "The ME…"

  "On his way, or so they say," Cuccio said. "Also the lab, and the duty captain."

  "Who is it tonight?"

  "Baker."

  "Keep your hats on."

  Captain Baker was notorious for bawling out officers for being seen in public without their hats on their heads. It had become even worse since a photograph of about half a dozen hatless officers had made it to the pages of the Post recently.

  The girl was wearing a tight black top with half sleeves, which showed off her shoulders and her flat midriff and deep belly button. Below that was a green skirt that would normally have been short, had it not been hiked up around her hips at the moment. Around her were some remnants of the Fourth of July, some dead bottle rockets and at least one exploded pack of firecrackers, maybe more.

  "See the rose?" Cuccio asked.

  "I see it."

  He had seen it without being told, and it made his stomach jump. There was a single rose protruding from the girl's vagina. She wasn't wearing panties. In the dark, the rose looked red, but when he shone the flashlight on it, he saw that it was instead a white rose with thick red stripes.

  Unusual.

  "Do roses come in that color naturally?" he asked, just out of curiosity.

  "Fucked if I know."

  Keough had been speaking to himself and hadn't expected a reply. For that reason, he ignored it.

  "Have you seen her panties around?"

  "No," Cuccio said, and then he admitted, "but I haven't looked around upstairs."

  Keough nodded. He decided not to send Cuccio up to do it now. It would get done, later.

  He leaned over and touched her briefly without moving her. There were no visible wounds, but he noticed that her neck had suffered some trauma. He couldn't tell how bruised she was. The yellow light from their flashes was washing her color out.

  "Strangled?" Cuccio asked.

  "Looks like it."

  He noticed that her breasts were pert and taut. While noticing that her inner thighs were bloody, he also noticed that her legs were tan and smooth. A tennis player's legs, an athlete's body. This little girl would never hit a tennis ball again.

  "Looks like the Lover's MO, huh?" Cuccio asked.

  Keough ignored his comment. He was wondering what color the roses that had been found on the other victims were. He'd assumed they'd been red, and he hadn't read the newspaper accounts closely enough to know differently. He looked up at the door the girl was lying next to.

  "Is this locked?"

  "Tight."

  He tried it anyway and found it locked. He made a mental note to see the custodian about the door.

  He stood up, played the light around the area. It was damp but not wet, so there were no footprints. She was barefoot, and her shoes were lying apart, one in a corner, the other near the body. They were white, and while not high heels, the heels were high enough to have shown off her legs. Walking around dressed like that, at this time of night, in this neighborhood…

  "So?" Cuccio asked. "Who the fuck did it?"

  Keough ignored him.

  "You'd better go back up and wait for the others."

  "Want to be a
lone with her?" Cuccio asked. A leer was plain in his tone.

  Keough stared at the cop and said coldly, "Yes."

  Cuccio shrugged and went back up the stairs.

  Keough illuminated her face again. She was young and pretty. In Vice, he had witnessed all kinds of abuse being heaped on the human body, but this… this was the worst, the most final abuse of all.

  This was a true sin.

  ***

  When the ME and lab arrived, he had to vacate the stairwell to make room for them. The girl's purse had been half under her, and he pulled it free and took it up with him.

  Up in the schoolyard, he found the duty captain waiting. Capt. Andrew Baker was the exec at the Six-Seven. It was no secret that he was waiting for Captain Farrell to be promoted to deputy inspector so that he could inherit the command of the Six-Seven. He was a smallish man, perhaps five eight or nine, with red hair and freckles, which he was forever having to live down. Behind his back, the men called him "Howdy Doody." His tough facade was his way of retaliating.

  "Who are you?" the man asked.

  "Keough, Six-Seven Squad."

  "Oh yeah," Baker said, as if he recognized him. "You alone?"

  "My partners are on another call."

  "Bullshit," Baker said, but he pursued the matter no further. "This officer says we have the Lover's next victim."

  Keough looked at Cuccio, who found something else to look at.

  "This officer's conclusion may be a little premature," he said dryly.

  "Well, is there a rose in her pussy or isn't there, Detective?" Baker asked.

  "There is a rose, Captain, yes," Keough said.

  "Well," the captain said officiously, "I'll take a look and decide."

  Keough didn't bother telling the man that it wasn't his decision to make. Keough was the detective who had responded to the call, he had "caught" the case, and he was in charge of the investigation. He moved aside so that the captain could go down and get in the way.

  He leaned against a wall and opened the girl's purse. It was white imitation leather with a gold plated chain. It was filled with the usual paraphernalia, doubled by the fact that the girl had both a woman's and a child's belongings inside. He dug among them and came up with her wallet. Holding the flashlight in the crook of his arm, he went through the wallet. He came up with a program card from Erasmus High School and a library card, both in the name Mindy Carradine. Neither had her address. Didn't kids know anything about carrying proper ID? Now he'd have to wait until morning, when the school opened, to get her address and notify her parents. He put everything back in her bag and tucked it under his arm. He'd submit it to be vouchered when he got back to the Station house.

  While Baker was downstairs, Keough instructed some of the uniforms to search the immediate area with their flashlights.

  "What are we lookin' for?" Cuccio asked.

  "Panties," Keough said.

  "Oh," Cuccio said, "a treasure hunt."

  Keough ignored him as the cops fanned out and began searching.

  Moments later, the ME, Dr. Ethan Mahbee, came up, muttering to himself. He was a tall, handsome West Indian in his late forties who detested the name many of the detectives in Brooklyn had assigned him: "Dr. Maybe."

  "Damned idiot bantam rooster," Keough heard Mahbee mutter. Obviously, the medical examiner did not think anyone could hear him. Keough did not let him know that he was wrong. Besides, the detective agreed with the man completely.

  "At least he doesn't yell at you about your hat," Keough said before he realized that the comment might alert the ME that he had heard his comment after all.

  Mahbee, however, did not seem to mind.

  Mahbee looked at Keough and said, "The man's a monumental asshole." There was a thin sheen of perspiration on the man's forehead and he swiped at it with his palms, then wiped the palms on his trousers.

  "I know," Keough said. "What have we got, Doc?"

  "A dead girl, damn it," Mahbee said. "A child. What a waste."

  "Dead how?"

  "For now, let's say she was strangled," Mahbee said. "I'll need to examine her where there's some light."

  "Raped?"

  "Possibly. If she was, judging from the blood, she was probably a virgin." Mahbee shook his head and added, "She probably lied about that to her friends. Most girls do these days."

  "You got a daughter?"

  "Hell no," Mahbee said, "and thank God for that. You?"

  "No."

  "You catching this one?"

  Keough nodded.

  "On the off chance that we've got a Lover victim here," Mahbee said, "I'll try to get it to you as soon as I can."

  "I appreciate that, Doc. Off the record, though, what do you think?"

  "I don't think," Mahbee said. "I haven't seen the other victims. This is going to be for someone else to decide, Detective, not you, not me, and certainly not that asshole down there."

  "Well, it's my case, for now."

  "For now," Mahbee said. "I wouldn't advise you to get too comfortable with it, though, Detective. The likes of you and me don't usually get involved in things this big, do we?"

  Mahbee threw one last disgusted glance down the stairs, then nodded to Keough and left.

  ***

  Keough was relegated to spectator for the next hour or so. There wouldn't be much he could do now until he received everyone's reports, collated the information, and did his own report.

  After awhile, Johnson and Adair showed up. Keough had left a message for them back at the precinct.

  "What have we got?" Johnson asked.

  "A hungry detective, an irate captain, and a dead girl."

  Adair smiled.

  "We brought you something, but it's probably cold by now. Why don't you go and get something to eat. We'll stick around here until the party thins out."

  At that point, two men from the coroner's office brought the body up the stairs in a body bag. Keough knew that inside the bag the girl's hands and feet would be individually bagged. A forensics man trailing the corpse handed Keough a plastic bag with the rose inside, thorns and all. Keough winced when he saw that.

  "That won't be long," Keough said. "The guest of honor just left."

  CHAPTER THREE

  Keough was allowed to suspend his night-watch duty in order to make his interviews and official notifications on Mindy Carradine and to write his reports. In effect, he was now working a double shift, staying through the eight-to-four shift. At least he'd have that night off, then go into his "swing," his time off between shifts-what civilians would call a weekend, only for cops it didn't always fall on a weekend. Cops didn't know what weekends were. For them, one day was pretty much like another. In this instance, Keough wanted to get as much as he could done on this case before he went into his swing.

  He thought the notification was going to be the tough part, but Mindy's parents-an aging blond mother who dressed the same way her daughter did and a father who answered the door wearing a dirty T-shirt and holding a can of beer-loudly blamed Mindy for her own death…

  "I don't know how many times I've told that girl not to go out dressed like some low-life bimbo," Sam Carradine said. He turned, looking at his wife, Honey-who was dressed like some low-life bimbo-and said, "Haven't I told her that? Why couldn't you get her to dress proper?"

  Honey-Keough couldn't tell if that was her name or just what her husband called her-tugged at the hem of her short skirt and said, "Sammy, I can't control her if she won't listen."

  "Well, she ain't around to listen anymore, is she?"

  Keough and Sam Carradine were about the same age, and he knew that the man was the type who had kept a pack of cigarettes wrapped in the sleeve of his T-shirt when he was a teen. He was the kind who thought he was a real man because he drank and spit and cursed. He was holding an open can of beer now, and when he gestured, some of it slopped onto the floor. Apparently, he had his wife well trained, because although she saw it, she made no comment, just stared at the spill a
s it soaked into the rug.

  Keough had to interrupt their argument to get one or both of them to go down to the morgue and identify their daughter.

  "I gotta go to work," Sam Carradine said to Honey. "You do it."

  Keough was about to give her credit later when she broke down during the ID, but then she ruined it by muttering, "The little bitch had to wear my skirt to get killed in."

  ***

  Keough read the coroner's report, which stated that the girl's larynx had practically been crushed and that she had definitely been raped. Whoever had strangled her had exerted incredible pressure with his thumbs, probably while he was raping her. Chances were good that by the time he came, she was gone.

  Keough shook his head, scolding himself for that little bit of morbid humor. He wondered idly if Mindy's loving parents would have seen the joke in that.

  The ME's report also indicated that the rose had been inserted into her vagina, thorns and all.

  Sick fuck.

  He talked to the school custodian, who explained that the basement door she had been found by was always locked and that he was the only one who had the key-except for the spare that hung on the PegBoard in his office, where almost anyone could have taken it.

  Keough wrote up his "five"-DD5, the Supplementary Complaint Report the detectives used to follow up or make changes in their cases-and submitted it. Naturally, it would have to cross the desk of the Six-Seven's executive officer, Captain Baker, but that would happen during Keough's swing.

  Keough knew that he would hear about it when he came back.

  During Keough's swing, Lt. Henry "Clipboard" Carson read the detective's five on the Carradine girl. Carson was called "Clipboard" because he was never seen without one. Every so often, he'd even been seen writing on the damned thing, but no one could ever figure out what the hell he was writing.

  Carson read Keough's report and immediately thought of the Lover Task Force. Since Captain Baker's name was in the report as having responded to the scene, he immediately left his office and headed downstairs to the exec's office-with his clipboard.